Mon, May 9, 2011

AUSTIN, Texas — Dylan T. Bumford, who graduated in Dec. 2010 after majoring in math, linguistics, psychology and Plan II at The University of Texas at Austin, has won the $20,000 grand prize in the University Cooperative Society’s Undergraduate Student Awards for Academic Excellence.

Winners of the undergraduate student awards were announced on Wednesday, May 4 at the 12th annual George H. Mitchell Awards for Academic Excellence at the Four Seasons Hotel in Austin.

The awards celebrate University of Texas at Austin students with exemplary academic records who have made an extraordinary contribution to their fields of study through a research project, literary work, musical composition, humanitarian project, or similar undertaking. Steven Goode, a member of the University Co-op’s Board of Directors and Distinguished Teaching Professor, hosted the event.

Bumford was nominated by Professor Johan Kamp, Ph.D., for his thesis titled "Making Sense of Sense: Lessons from Synaesthetic Metaphor." Next year he will enter the linguistics Ph.D. program at Stanford University, where he plans to continue his work in logic, linguistics and psychology, in an effort to formulate more holistic and comprehensive principles of cognitive science.

Three other undergraduate students, Mauro Caffarelli, a biology and Plan II major, Agustin Cepeda, an architecture design major, and Emily Hawthorne, a French and Plan II major, won the second prize and received $5,000 each.

The five winners of the $2,000 awards were Darius Bunandar, a mechanical engineering and physics major, Zachary Cuyler, a history and Plan II major, Annia Raja, a psychology major, Matthew Ramirez, an English and classics major, and Margaret Sanders, a psychology and Plan II major.